Halloween: The Mask Maker
by ablackwood
Summary: A low level mask maker unwittingly creates the famous mask that Michael Myers wore on that fateful day in 1978.


How do you create the face of evil? What inspires its design? For me, it came to fruition in that most nourishing breeding ground of darkness - A nightmare. I have forever used this realm to inspire the work I produce, and it was this method that led me to construct one of the most infamous and iconic forms that is known in our popular culture today. The mantle of a maniac. The veil of viciousness. The shape of a savage. I have decided to remain anonymous in this confessional, past experience has made this a necessity, but all you really need to know about me is this – I created the mask of Michael Myers.

For over 40 years I've been sculpting and moulding horror masks. You've probably browsed my work countless times in Halloween stores and not known it. Unlike most artists my work isn't displayed in stuffy art galleries or at bland exhibitions, it is interactive with, 'lived in' by the participants, allowing them to escape into their darkest fantasies. You could say IT almost _possesses_ them. Until Michael Myers decided to don my creation on that fateful day in 1978, I had hardly any profile in the industry at all. I was a low-level freelancer, slopping from gig to gig. I worked non-stop designing new masks and sending samples to all the biggest effects shops in town, only to hear nothing back. No one saw my potential…apart from Myers. I won't bore you further with the details of my cliché 'artistic struggle' instead I will skip forward to how I came to craft the 'disguise of the devil'.

It was 1977, late in the year I believe, and I had just secured a new contract with a franchise of hardware stores that covered the whole of the mid-west area. It was probably one of the biggest orders of my career. The company wanted seven new Halloween masks to stock their stores for the upcoming season. On paper the order looked impressive, stating that my masks would be part of their 'premium range' and 'on show to our unique clientele', but in reality..I knew what I was creating - Bargain bin fillers. Cheap, two dollar, last minute grabs for those lousy parents who forgot to get their little sprogs a decent costume. Still the pay would keep the wolves from the doors for now; little did I know I'd soon be welcoming a bigger, nastier wolf into my life.

I always prefer to work during the night. Something about the isolation and solitude has always complimented my creativity. My shop back then was a very simple set up, a few head busts to mould on, some basic tools and cheap paints. The shop also doubled as my lounge, kitchen, dining room and den. Still, my principle is that you should be able to create great art in any space – so long as you have a vast imagination to compensate.

I began by making my own versions of the enduring classics; A Funky Frankenstein, a Drooling Dracula, a Wacky Wolfman. I knew that at least some of these fond favourites would move off the shelves no matter the quality. Then I started on a mid-range detailed line – a Wicked Witch, a Putrid Pumpkin and a Scary Skull. A series I could input more of my own 'creative signature' into. I was making good progress, but came to a standstill when my mind was taken captive by a pounding headache, quite unlike anything I've experienced before. Almost as if my head was being split in two. I self-prescribed what equated to a small chemist's worth of painkillers and then retreated to the bedroom for a long lie down.

That's when it came to me; piercing through the thick fog of my head-storm with perfect clarity - The Nightmare. I remember it now, as clear as any 'real life' traumatic event you care to imagine. It began in a corridor, pale and colourless, with a series of doors running along each side. The whole place was in a serious state of disrepair, with cracked plaster and mould abound. As I walked along the hall I notice each door had a name scribed onto its front, along with a tattered piece of paper hanging beneath it. I walked over to the nearest door to me, which unlike the others had no name but had instead a long deep dent running through the main panel. The page beneath was also blank, apart from one faded logo printed in the left hand corner. It read: Smith's Grove Sanatorium.

 _Believe what you wish at this point. I'm sure these details seem all too convenient for some…but I had no knowledge of Smith's Grove Sanatorium until several days after the Haddonfield massacre. I learnt about it the same way everyone else did, via news reports as they recounted 'the night that HE came home'. I never put much stock behind the psychology of the repressed memory theory but that is the closest model that I can correlate this episode to. This detail was sponged from my mind completely until the day after Michael's night of trick or treating. But again, believe what you like._

As I stood in front of the metal frame I suddenly felt an overwhelming compulsion to see what was on the other side of the door. The underlining logic of my internal survival instinct shouting 'Don't go in there!' was silenced, as I gently turned the rusty handle and pushed the door ajar. Inside was a hospital room, clinical and sparse. One bed, a toilet, a sink and a chair. However, unlike the corridor leading into it, this room was in perfect condition and filled by the amber light of the sun that was just setting beyond the room's barred windows. For a moment this was all I could see. Then, within the blink of an eye, two figures instantly appeared before me. One was an older man, small in stature and pudgy in build. The amber ray reflected brightly on his bald head and made the dark brown suit he was wearing look like dried blood. He stood with his back to me and was looking directly at the other figure, a small boy, with dark blonde hair, who was restrained by the arms and legs in a padded chair.

I make no overstatement when I say that my heart froze when I looked at this boy's face. Creepy doesn't begin to describe the child. There was something inertly inhuman about his features. As if he was whittled out of wood. He had thick, black pupils, which seemed to swirl and contort as if a deep storm brewed beneath the irises. Suddenly the bald man shook a clenched fist at this living statue and the child pivoted his head with robotic precision to look up at him. The bald man began shouting something but all I could hear was distorted muffling. This sound grew louder and as it did the whole room began to warp, like heat waves rising from hot asphalt.

I could feel myself being pulled back from the doorway. Back from this nightmare into reality. As my eyes began to vignette into darkness the boy turned back to face me. His angler fish eyes rolled back in their sockets, showing me the white veiny Sclera . Then he opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue, to reveal a burning tea light candle perched perfectly on its tip. His mouth widen slowly upwards until the flesh tore at the seams, creating a cruel, bloody grin. Finally, his eyes lit up with a dark orange glow and he became the perfect resemblance of a human/ jack-o-lantern hybrid. That's when I awoke mid-scream, catching my throat before I tore my vocal chords in two. My neighbours later told me that they thought about calling the police, as they had heard me clear as day through two foot of concrete. My whole body tingled with electrical fear, my fingers pulsated in time with my raging heartbeat…and my trousers were soaked with urine. Despite all this, my mind was clear and I had only one thought that echoed repeatedly around my skull: I need to get back to work.

I felt like a planchette on an Ouija board. The hands pushing the clay around on the head bust where not my own, but those belonging to some other demonic force. I was a puppet for whatever sinister master controlled me from 'the other side'. The whole time I sculpted I saw the demon boy's face, as if he was now permanently exposed on my subconscious. That darkness, that brutality, that ruthlessness - the same unnerving fear you feel standing on train tracks or in front of lion's cage at the zoo. You never know when the evil will strike, but if you drop your guard even a moment, it will take you. I felt I had to try and capture that evil, to contain it. To bottle that dark lightning behind something as empty and impassive as a blank white face. This is probably all 'fancy talk' to the rest of you, but I just never wanted to see that boy's face again. I had to exorcise his image using clay and plaster.

After what seemed like years, I was able to break away from the sculpture to readjust my eyes. I went across to the other side of the room and switched on the small black and white Television. I thought the extra noise might help drown out my own internal dialogue. I turned the dial to a random channel and an episode of Star Trek slowly faded into view. William Shatner as Captain Kirk paraded around on the screen. Even back in his hey-day I thought he was a terrible actor. That impassive, disinterested smirk, he always displayed really got to me. Maybe I could capture some of that boredom into this mask? Maybe that style would sooth the rage behind its wearer? I turned back to the sculpture and began enlarging the eyeholes with my thumbs. I pursed the lips, enhanced the cheek bones and then smothered the piece with plaster. Really it looked nothing like William Shatner, but I felt satisfied I had imprinted some of his aura into the beast. I left the piece to set and caught some shuteye on the sofa for a few hours, only to be haunted once again by visions of the bald man and his demon companion.

When I awoke again, I dug out the clay by hand and I poured in the latex filling. This was before the age of 3D printers, digital modelling software and all the other modern conveniences my industry enjoys today. Back when sculptors put their blood and sweat into a mask and revelled in the immense satisfaction of physically pushing your creation to the finish line. But I felt no satisfaction this time. I found the ghastliest white paint I could and started roughly dabbing it all around the face. For hair, I found some cheap cuts I got from a clearance sale and quickly threaded the patches onto the scalp. Later the next day I sent the master moulds for all the masks, along with a detailed plan for assembly, to a factory in Iowa for mass production. And that, I thought, was that. Just a weird fever dream which would soon fade from my memory. Like Dicken's 'Scoorge' put Marley's ghost down to glob of 'undigested gravy' I summarised that the 'demon boy nightmares' were the adverse symptoms of early flu.

It is probably a perverse thing to contemplate that one owes one's entire career to a serial killer. Without Michael's murderous endorsement I would never be as financially comfortable as I am today. Nor would I have had the confidence to kick-start my own business by setting up a full-fledged workshop. Naturally, I do sometimes think about those poor kids who met an untimely end; Eye's frozen with fright, bodies slashed into slithers, not a drop of blood left to spill…and the last image they see is the face that I created. But then I check my bank balance and I suddenly feel less guilty.

In total, one hundred of the original 'Myers Masks' were mailed out to stores across the country. Despite a few mix up's in production, resulting in some blond hair variants being released into circulation, the masks landed on store shelves at the beginning of October 1978. After the massacre, I saw reports describing the mask worn by the killer, but the accounts were too varied for me to put the pieces together. Some say the killer wore a child's clown mask, while others reported a pink mask with brown hair. Some even said he didn't wear a mask at all but that his face just had an unnatural rubbery appearance from the years he had spent locked up in the asylum. I only identify the design as mine when I saw a TV interview with a Mr Grant Nichols - owner of Haddonfield's local hardware store. He claimed that 'The Boogeyman' himself had broken into the shop and taken several objects, including one of my creations. I remember watching him violently shaking the mask in front of the camera lens, acting as if he himself had decapitated the monster. He then gave a 'fire and brimstone' speech, saying that this killer was 'rightly burning in hell' and that he would be 'disposing of all the remaining masks he had in stock', and that he 'encouraged other distributors to do the same'. Luckily for me, no one else shared this sentiment. My client called me the very next day and offered to extend my contract along with a handsome bonus to boot. Knowing that I held the patent to a potential gold mine, I made some shrewd negotiations and by Halloween next year an army of Michael Myers masks flooded the market. Foolish Mr Nichols…if he saw what those original masks are going for on Ebay he'd probably have a stroke.

And so that is how my empire came to be. How my legacy and Michael Myers are forever intertwined in money and blood. I'm sure my creation will continue to live on, even long after I am dead. The appetite of evil is unquenchable. There are even these 'strange conventions' were people dress up as Myers and celebrate his infamous status. I've often been invited to attend as a guest speaker, but they've never been able to pay me enough to make it worth my while.

On a few occasions, the nightmare has returned to torture my dreams, and I find myself back in that hospital room again - The same Demon Boy (or the young Michael, as I soon came to know him). The same Bald Man (or The Boogeyman Hunter, Doctor Loomis, as he is better known). This usually happens just before Myers decides to reappear before the world – once in 1988, a year later in 1989 then again in 1995. Every time he returns our orders increased two fold. Sometimes, when my accounts are looking poor, I'd pray for that nightmare to come and replenish my negative balance. Over the years other companies have produced poor quality imitations of my original creation, but none of them have ever come close to capturing that essence of horror, that seed of evil, that I so perfectly moulded that night in 77'. Alas, for all my success I've suffered my fair share of setbacks and had a lot of vile mud slung my way. Mostly from **YOU**. Yes **ALL OF** **YOU** \- the so-called 'fine residents' of Haddonfield, who I have each sent a copy of this letter to, in order to make you realise that your suffering is not yet over.

After years of campaigning and slander you finally succeeded in pulling my Myer's Mask from the market. I feel I should applaud your villainess efforts - I couldn't believe the lengths you were willing to go to protect your rotten home image; From spamming my business address with protest letters, rallying your local congress man to brand my business as a 'terrorist organisation' and eventually seeking out your own justice by burning my workshop to the ground. Oh, I cannot prove any of this of course. You all covered your tracks so well. I'm sure in reality it was only a few of your number who were directly involve in this smear crusade. But you will ALL share the same fate let me assure you of that.

Your little backwater town should be honouring Myers and me. We put you on the map with a big, bloody dot. Don't pretend every single one of you hasn't personally gained from this so-called 'curse' in some form or another. Whether it was having your photo taken for the local newspaper or bragging to your out of state friends that you once saw The Boogeyman and lived to tell the tale. You have a legacy most small towns could only dream about. And I'm sure most of them would happily sacrifice some worthless teenagers to secure this celebrity status.

Despite all my hatred, ultimately I just pity you. Pity your attempt to ban Halloween outright. Pity your lack of vision. Pity your incredible arrogance to believe that Myers is truly dead. Now the time is drawing near again. I feel the pull of the nightmare closing in on my dreams. The days are growing short and soon he will return, to rip back Halloween night, like a blanket from your clutches. Bar your doors and windows, permanently ground your children, load your guns and sharpen your knifes. Do you what you think you have to do to survive. And when the morning sun rises on the 1st of November, and your people lie gutted in the streets, I will be there to sell more masks and collect the devil's profit.

Happy Halloween


End file.
